More Vampires, Please

What the world really needs is more teenage vampire movies. Or at least that's the opinion of Katie Orifice, Professor of Dubious Internet Qualifications at the University of Adelaide. It is Professor Orifice's view that modern entertainment media is lacking generic two-dimensional coming-of-age dramas thinly disguised as supernatural fantasies.

"We're not just talking teen vampire shows," says Professor Orifice. "We are also short on adolescent superheroes, juvenile psychics and boy wizards. I turned on the TV the other day and was quite shocked by the lack of werewolves. How can we expect our kids to grow up to be well adjusted adults unless we constantly bombard them with formulaic paranormal dramas in which they can subsume their own perfectly normal pubescent insecurities?"

Professor Orifice argues that the average teenager can learn to conquer their feelings of isolation and self-doubt if they are encouraged to fantasise that their obvious shortcomings are actually some sort of supernatural gift which makes them 'special'. Thus, a fourteen-year-old boy riddled with chronic acne and the frequent victim of neighbourhood bullies becomes, in his mind, Zit Man - who must rapidly come to terms with his awesome ability to defeat his persecutors with his powerful 'pus ray', while at the same time struggling to understand his feelings for his older sister's best friend.

"It's bullshit," admits Professor Orifice. "But it's bullshit that serves a purpose, and for this reason we need this sort of fiction to flourish. It's just a shame that we don't have a TV and film industry that is dominated by a bunch of geeks who grew up reading comics in the seventies and are now desperately seeking to compensate for a youth in which they were intimidated, ridiculed and ignored by the opposite sex, by investing in fan-wank that seems solely designed to shield them from ever having to leave their childhood behind."